


Constant

by ourdreamsrealized



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Drama, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Mild Language, Reader-Insert, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 09:23:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18363164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ourdreamsrealized/pseuds/ourdreamsrealized
Summary: After surviving the mutt attack, Finnick is left with more than a few scars. He’s changed, and you struggle with caring for the man you love when he seems to have lost his former zest for life.





	Constant

**Author's Note:**

> Posting stuff from my Tumblr. Enjoy!

It took him three months to recover and another three weeks after that for him to finally allow you to see him. Well, he didn’t actually allow you to see him. It was more him giving up because you were just that stubborn and he was just that tired. 

  
“I thought I told you that you couldn’t visit me.”

  
“Actually, you weren’t the one to tell me that. Haymitch was,” you replied, crossing your arms over your chest. “And he didn’t give a very convincing argument. In fact, he told me I should visit you anyway.” 

  
He had rolled his eyes at that, pushing himself to a seated position in the hospital bed with a low groan. “I didn’t want you to see me like this…”

  
It was true that it hurt you to see him in such a state, covered in bandages from head to toe with very few patches of skin peeking out between the white strips. Even a portion of his face—the area around the right eye and left jaw line—was hidden from your view. The white stripes descended down his left jaw, wrapping around his neck and disappearing beneath his hospital gown.

  
But it wasn’t the bandages that alarmed you; it was the fact that underneath all of them was mangled skin, healing into distorted scar tissue. 

  
You knew he wasn’t going to take it well; the discomfort was already beginning.

  
“You’re lucky that you’re alive,” you reminded him because you knew he couldn’t lose sight of that.

  
What you could see of his jaw tightened as he looked away from you, his gaze trained on the daylight sneaking into his room through the window. “I want to go home.”

  
The corner of your lip lifted into a slanted smile as you approached him. Sitting on the end of his bed, you placed your hand over his, squeezing the top one. His gaze wavered a moment, his sea foam eyes sliding to see your joined hands before returning to the sky.

“I’ll take you home, and you’ll be happy. I promise.”

* * *

You kept part of your vow. The hospital discharged Finnick about a week or two later, instructing you to bring him back for a follow-up to see how he was healing. Knowing that Finnick had had enough of the Capital, you brought him to a District Four hospital. 

Finnick had given up on trying to keep you from seeing his marred skin, but he really was sad to watch, wandering aimlessly around his house with a slight limp to his step. 

You were pretty sure he was depressed, but you were also certain that getting him to see a therapist would be a war, one you were unlikely to win. So you did the only thing you could do—be there for him.

It was a tedious task, getting him to eat a normal amount or get dressed for the day. Some days he would try to skip a shower or refuse to get out of bed. You also would try to take him outside, grabbing his hand and practically dragging him towards the front door. However, the minute your opposite hand was on the knob, he’d begin to pull you back into the house. 

These attempts always ended up with the two of you taking a few laps around the first floor as a way of exercise. This indoor walk was what you looked forward to because it was the only time you saw Finnick as he once was…a happy go-lucky guy that smiled with a luminescence that could rival any star in the sky. 

Today, however, Finnick was not having it.

“Finnick, you can’t just sleep all day,” you sighed, placing your palms on your hips as the grown man in the queen-sized bed before you turned onto his side, bringing his wool blanket over his head. “Finnick…”

“Mmm.”

You exhaled, rounding the mattress before sitting next to where you assumed Finnick’s face rested. You lifted an arm to gently shake his shoulder, but he was quick to shove your touch away.

“Finnick…I made you breakfast…”

This time, the groan had a curious ring to it. 

It was quite recent, but his interest in food—well, the foods he liked—had returned. Some difficult mornings, you could get him up by simply waving a plate containing one of his favorite meals just beneath his nose. He’d shoot up out of bed like the cannon that signified the start of the Hunger Games, especially if he was hungry.

“It’s your favorite…” you sang giving a light tug to the blanket he still had over his head. The cloth barely moved, and, honestly, you shouldn’t have been surprised. Finnick was practically ripped, and he maintained his muscled form, despite lazing about.

You envied him for that.

“Poached eggs and toast. Hash browns, too.”

He didn’t budge or make a sound. 

You sighed, letting your head fall back. “I guess I’ll have to eat it all by myself…”

You shrugged your shoulders in mock nonchalance before heading out of his room and into the hallway. From here, you could smell the fruit of your laboring over the stove since you woke up earlier in the day, and you knew it would soon make its way to Finnick. You had purposely left the door open for this reason.

You were almost done with your portion when he finally made his way downstairs. 

“Morning, sunshine,” you said before wiping the corners of your mouth with your napkin. 

No response. 

“Your food is here.”

He walked over to you slowly, his eyes focused on the food. He sat down and picked up a utensil in each hand. He cut up the egg with the manners of a gentleman, bringing it to his mouth with his fork and then picking up his buttered toast for a bite. 

He made no sounds or expressions of approval, but you take the fact that he’s even eating it as a compliment to the chef.

After he cleaned his plate of everything, including the hash browns, he took the vitamins you put out for him, downing it with a glass of water you had set by his plate. He then placed the glass down with a loud clank that nearly made you jump. His hand remained encircling the cup, his eyes on the bottom of it, on his plate, on his lap, on anywhere but you.

“Why do you stay here?”

The question came out raspy, his throat still sounding dry despite having drank so much water.

“Because this is my home, now.” You reasoned, although you know it wasn’t. 

Finnick was your home; he always had been, even before he became a victor the first time, but he would never know. It wasn’t that you didn’t want to tell him. You had just waited too long because a confession, now, would be taken as you saying you had feelings for him simply because you pitied him. 

“If you had another home, would you go there?”

You felt every muscle in your body begin to tighten, frustration lacing your veins as it coursed through with your blood. 

You inhaled. You exhaled. “I don’t have another home, so that question is irrelevant.”

“ _If_.  _If_ you had another home…would you go there?” His knuckles were white as his grip tightened around the clear cylinder. 

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because my home is here.” Closer to the truth.

Finnick was silent for several moments, his short nails taping the glass in his hand. You could almost see the cogs turning in his head, searching for a way to trap you, searching for a way to make you admit that he trapped you here.  
Which was ridiculous, on all accounts.

“Why do you take care of me?”

“Because you took care of me.”

He had. Back during your school days, when you had no friends and were basically the target everyone picked, Finnick spoke to you. He asked about your day, every day without fail. He essentially became your best and only friend, and so, when you grew older and puberty hit you like a swinging door to the face, you ignored all the guys that wanted you.

You only ever had eyes for Finnick. 

“So you feel indebted to me?”

The table jostled with the force you used to push yourself up and out of the chair. Your thighs cried, asking why you had to bruise them with the wooden surface, why you couldn’t push out then up. You slammed your hands down on the teal, striped table cloth and glared at the man you loved.

“I have had enough of this, Finnick! I am not here, with you, acting all domestic because I pity you or feel like I owe you something. I am not here to deal with your bullshit and still smile. I am not here to be miserable with you or listen to you feel sorry for yourself. I am not here to be your mother, to clean up after you and make sure you take care of yourself. And I am certainly not here because I have nowhere else to go.” You raised your hand, pointing your second finger at him. “And if you stopped wallowing in self-pity and thought about it for just a little while, you would know exactly why I am here. The old Finnick would. He’d know in a fucking heartbeat.” To emphasize this, you snapped your fingers. “He wouldn’t question it. He’d be confident in his own suspicion, and he’d be right, damn it!”

With that, you tore your stare away from the gaping fish before you, spun on your heels and headed upstairs, deciding you couldn’t deal with him at the moment. Not in this state.

A part of you wished the Finnick you had fallen in love with would return within a split second of you knocking some sense into the new one. You wished he would follow after you, stop you on the stairs and tell you that he felt the same.

But Prince Charmings never came when you needed them most.

They also didn’t come an hour after that.

* * *

You didn’t leave you room until late afternoon. You had decided you should probably start dinner and apologize to Finnick.

You regretted yelling at him like that after about an hour of brooding followed by twenty minutes of sobbing into your pillow.

Maybe you could make it up to him by making his absolute favorite, shrimp scampi. Of course, this would mean going out to the market and picking up the required ingredients. You were pretty sure that the only things you had that were required for the recipe was the pasta and spices. The shrimp and everything needed for the sauce would have to be bought.

You made your way downstairs, taking each step slowly as your hand traced the smooth wood of the banister. 

When you reached the bottom of the staircase, you peered into the living room, surprised to find that Finnick was not in there. Usually, around this time, he would put on the television and channel search until he found something that interested him.

“Finnick?”

The following silence caused a tidal wave of dread to crash over you, and, suddenly, it was hard to breathe. Your chest constricted, your heart nearly beating out of it as you ran back upstairs and unceremoniously threw the doors open to every room, even the closets. Once you finished that floor, you returned to the first, repeating the process and checking every nook and cranny.

You could not find him.

At this point, you were choking on a sob, tears prickling at the corners of your eyes as you leaned back against the limestone kitchen counter. You brought a hand up to your face as you began to card through every possible place he could have gone when he didn’t want to leave the house at all.

You looked towards the window over the stainless steel sink and nearly stumbled over to it when you saw Finnick’s form outside it.

He was alive, dressed in a hoodie and swim trunks, his bare feet disappearing in the mounds of sand. His hands were in his pockets as he stared out to sea, his back to you.

But you knew those broad shoulders. 

You rushed to the back French doors, pushing against one before running outside, down the deck steps and towards Finnick.

He turned around by the time your feet were in the warm sand, his eyebrows lifting with the widening of his sea-foam orbs as he caught a glimpse of you, flailing like a mad woman as you dashed across the grainy ground.

He took a few steps towards you, a small smile tugging at his lips at the show you were giving him. You could only imagine what you looked like, probably something akin to a baby deer walking for the first time.

Finnick brought his hands out of his hoodie pockets to catch you when you tripped into him. A breathy laugh squeezed its way passed the crooked line of his mouth as he shook his head at you.

“What are you doing?”

A bit out of air, you tried explaining the horrible nightmare you had just been through, “Well, I came downstairs, and you were gone. So I searched the whole house, top to bottom, but I still couldn’t find you. And I couldn’t leave to go to the market to buy the stuff I wanted to get for your dinner without knowing if you were alive, but then I saw you out here…”

He started chuckling, and the sound was so beautiful, despite the fact he was obviously amused by the over-whelming worry you had felt in the minutes leading up to this.

You oogled him as he continued to laugh, not stopping until he noticed and arched a fair brow at you.

“What?”

“I think that was the first time you laughed since…”

You didn’t have to say it. He knew what you meant, but, unlike the other times you had referred to his run-in with the mutts, his slanted smile remained on his face. 

You swallowed, growing a bit flustered since that radiant grin was directed at you, and looked away, deciding you should probably apologize now. “I wanted to say that I was sorry…The way I acted earlier…The things I said were uncalled for and extremely hurtful. I was just…”

“…tired of all my bullshit?” He snickered, causing you to bring your gaze back to him. “I actually wanted to thank you, Y/N. Life has been…rather bleak for me since those mutts messed up my face, and I knew I couldn’t keep living on this way. There were times that I wished I had died, and then there were times that I just wanted to continue my life, here, with you.” As he said this, he took your hands between his digits and brought them up to his lips, brushing each of your fingertips with the smooth skin. “What you said to me earlier today was like a bucket of ice. It woke me up, and I realized how utterly unbearable I must have been.”

“It’s okay, I—!”

Finnick hushed you, trying to hold back a laugh when he saw the shock in your expression. “I was, and you know it.” He chuckled when you shrugged in response. “I’m not the old Finnick. I changed a lot these past few months, but I still care about you, Y/N. That is the one thing that has, and will, remain constant. I know your feelings are probably not the same; after all, you fell for me long before the Hunger Games…”

It was your turn to press a finger to his lips and shush him. “I never said that my feelings changed. I still love you, and that, my darling Finnick, will remain constant.”

His mouth stretched into a grin before he pursed them together to press a quick, fleeting kiss to your skin. He then pushed your hand to the side, swooping down to capture your lips as his arms dropped around your waist, pulling you into him.


End file.
